


On Being a Big Brother

by alexdamien



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Gen, HRE is Germany, Siblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-23
Updated: 2014-09-23
Packaged: 2018-02-18 13:34:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 11
Words: 3,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2350223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alexdamien/pseuds/alexdamien
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kugelmugel asks Prussia how he became Germany's big brother. Prussia would rather not answer.<br/>Tw for blood, death, and a fair bit of violence.<br/>Written for Searching For Mercury because I thought she would be moved by it but wasn't. Ah, well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SearchingForMercury](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SearchingForMercury/gifts).



> This story ties a little with my other fic Human Woes, so look into it in case you want to read about Spain and Prussia going on a trip with a few goats.

Prussia refused to get down from the room to annoy Germany. He should not be on the roof. He should be down in the house helping him clean, not throwing a tantrum because Germany wouldn’t let him keep those dumb pandas.

“Get down from there already!” yelled Germany from the garden.

Prussia showed his head from up on the roof just to stick his tongue out at Germany.

“Is this some new game between you?” asked a voice behind Germany. Austria stood on the sidewalk with a cake in one hand and a little child on the other.

“We’re not playing! He’s being childish because I told him he can’t keep those pandas he bought,” said Germany. “Who’s that boy?”

The little boy stared at the flowers in the garden, not paying any attention to them, until Austria pushed him forward.

“Say hi Kugelmugel,” said Austria.

Kugelmugel looked up at Germany with a bored expression. “Hi,” he said, and went back to looking at the flowers.

“He’s not very social,” said Austria. “He’s a micronation in a park at my place. I thought you should meet him. I brought cake.”

Who, that’s great, yes. Come in please. I’m sure Bruder will come down from there soon,” said Germany and let them into the house.

Austria opened the box with the cake while Germany set the coffee machine.

“I hear Sealand went to live with Sweden recently,” said Germany.

“England has never been good with children,” said Austria.

They brought everything to the living room and found Kugelmugel drawing on the walls with some pens he had found. Germany paled.

“T-the walls…,” he stuttered.

“Kugelmugel! I told you not to draw on the walls!” said Austria, taking the pens away from him.

“But I wanted to draw!” protested Kugelmugel, pouting.

“That’s no reason to do this. You know it’s wrong!”

Prussia came padding into the living room. “Stop yelling at the kid,” he ordered, radiating exactly zero authority in his yellow bird slippers, old black t-shirt and boxers that had “Awesome booty” printed on them.

“Come kiddo, I’ll find you something to draw with,” he said, extending a hand out to him.

Kugelmugel stared up at Austria for permission first.

“Go with him, he’s harmless,” said Austria with a tired sigh.

Prussia brought him to the study where he rummaged around looking for some blank sheets of paper and pencils.

“That man, Germany,” said Kugelmugel, looking at the picture of both of them that Germany kept on his desk. “He called you brother…”

“Yup. He’s my genius little brother. Although sometimes he gets too strict,” said Prussia giving him some colored pens.

“Hmmm. I think…I think I’d like to have a little brother.”

Prussia laughed. “Really? Having a little brother is a lot of responsibility. Do you think you can take care of one? And what if he grows up very big and won’t let you have your own toys? What then? Being a big brother is very difficult,” he said.

Kugelmugel looked at the pencils in his hands. “I don’t know. But sometimes I get lonely,” he said. “Art is enough most of the time. But not at night when can’t sleep and I feel like I want someone to talk to. Even though I don’t have much to say.”

Prussia petted his head.

“I know how it feels kiddo. It’s hard because we’re not humans. Even if that stuck up Austria was a woman, he would still not be able to give you a brother.”

“Then how did you get yours?” asked Kugelmugel.

“Ah, that’s…it was complicated. And very difficult,” said Prussia, thinking back on that.


	2. Chapter 2

**_1806_ **

“I have something you need to have,” said France’s note, and Prussia already knew what he would bring. He had heard the news last night.

When he saw France riding towards him, the coffin he carried seemed too small, as if for a baby. For a desperate moment Prussia hoped it wasn’t him. He sent a quick prayer to the sky and didn’t even notice that the words that left his lips were in Arabic.

France dismounted his horse, and carried the coffin. He still wore his dirty uniform, splattered here and there with mud and blood and dirt, and blood. So much blood.

“I’m sorry,” he said, handing the coffin to Prussia. “I never wanted to destroy him like this. But I still… you loved him the most. You should have the last farewell.

Prussia’s legs gave out, and he dropped to the ground.

“No, no…,” he said and opened the coffin to find the little body f Holy Rome inside, his skin pale, his eyes closed, and an asphyxiating stench of death coming from him.

France closed the lid. “Prussia, we are not human, and you cannot cling to him. We are earth and sky. This body must be returned to the earth,” he said.

Prussia stared at him with unseeing eyes, and hearing only the sound of the hurting heart in his chest. He jumped to his feet and kicked France in the face.

“You killed him! You wouldn’t stop until you broke him apart!” he yelled and unsheathed his sword.

France scrambled to stand up and backed away, but Prussia was already moving. The sword was already in his chest and he fell down clutching at the blade.

“It should have been you!” yelled Prussia.

He picked up the coffin, jumped onto his horse and fled, leaving France on the ground, cutting his fingers on the steel of his sword.


	3. Chapter 3

He rode to Spain’s house. Once he recovered, France would be after him, and Austria would no doubt support him in making sure Holy Rome’s body was destroyed. But he couldn’t do it. He wouldn’t. The very idea spurred him to ride faster.

Spain met him on horseback on the road up to his estate.

“What is that?” he asked, blocking his path.

“Spain please, you have to help me!”

“Answer me! What is that?” he asked again, this time pointing a musket at the coffin.

Prussia pulled the coffin against himself.

“It’s Holy Rome. Spain please. I can’t…I can’t leave him.”

Spain’s gaze went from the coffin to Prussia’s eyes, and back to the coffin. He lowered the musket.

“I felt like death itself was riding up to meet me,” he said, and started back towards his Hacienda.

Prussia breathed a sigh of relief.

“You can’t stay here for too long,” said Spain when they entered the house. “I don’t want Romano to see him. I don’t think he felt it’s presence like I did, but I had him locked in his room anyway.”

“I…I don’t know what to do now,” said Prussia, caressing the black lacquered coffin.  He opened it and held Holy Rome’s little body in his arms. A trickle of dark rotting blood fell from his lips and Spain turned his face away from him.

“Prussia, I…there’s something coming from that body. It feels like…I don’t know. When I look at him I feel like I’m dying too.”

“I know. I can feel it too, but I don’t care. I loved him as a brother, I loved him as an emperor….What should I do now? I can’t let him go. He died afraid, I can hear him calling when I close my eyes.”

Spain shook his head. “Put him back in the coffin please. Romano might feel it,” he said, and looked around the cabinets for a drink of something that would calm his nerves.

He poured some golden rum for Prussia and himself.

“No, I can’t,” refused Prussia, looking at the coffin next to him.

“Take it. You’re shaking,” said Spain.

Prussia looked down at his hands and noticed that he really was trembling. He took the glass and downed it. Spain refilled it.

“Rest tonight. We leave tomorrow at first light,” said Spain, taking a swig from the bottle.

“Where-?” asked Prussia, but his thought were a jumble, and he couldn’t bring himself to complete the question.

“There’s a cave beneath a waterfall, down to the south. That’s as far from everything else you can be within my lands. It’s small, next to the shore. That’s the only place I can think of. Did you steal the body from France?”

Prussia shook his head. “No. He brought him to me. Said I should have the last farewell. Bastard, how could I ever let him go? I can’t. He’s dead and even now I just want to follow him into death.”

Spain went to ruffle Prussia’s hair, while keeping himself as far away from the coffin as he could.

“Rest,” he told him. The gold crucifix in his chest glinting in the orange light from the lamp on the table. “We’ll get him to a safe place, and figure out the rest later.”

That night Prussia cried himself to sleep, with Holy Rome’s coffin in his arm, and Spain spent the night staring at them, thinking about departures and the many faces of death.

Truly, for a moment just as he was falling asleep at the table, he thought he heard a whisper of something. A scared gasp.

He reached for his dagger, and wondered what Prussia might be dreaming about.

Death had cold hands and the most attractive promise of peace. He knew that too well.


	4. Chapter 4

Spain had the coffin enclosed within an iron box and threw holy water all over it. Prussia complained about it being too hard, and it helped not at all to dim the feeling of dread that grabbed at Spain’s heart whenever he got close to it. In the end he sent Prussia ahead while he gave the last orders to his household.

“When are you coming back?” asked Romano, pouting. “Be quick about it. I hate the servants’ cooking.”

Spain lifted him up and placed a kiss on his forehead. “I’ll be back as soon as possible,” he said. “

While climbing his horse and waving back at Romano, he wondered if he had managed to smell the scent of death on him. The stench was still stuck in Spain’s nose, so much that he could barely smell anything else.

“You said first light,” complained Prussia when Spain caught up with him. “We should have set off ages ago. France will be all over us in no time.” His pain had sharpened his senses until he was a warrior back in the field.

“I don’t think France will come after us soon,” said Spain. In fact, he was sure France would never go after them, but he knew at this point it was useless to try and stop Prussia’s paranoia. Especially when he knew there would be others more annoying that France after them.

 

They were ambushed past midday.

Austrian forces.

“Prussia, have you gone insane?” asked Austria behind a line of his men. A small escort of six men. Spain quickly counted heads, swords and guns.

“Get out of my way Austria. This no longer concerns you,” said Prussia, reaching for his gun. Two of the human men pointed muskets at him, the other four guns.

Above them, dark clouds gathered. Austria glared at Spain as thunder echoed overhead.

“Or course it concerns me. Please, for the love you had for him. Let him rest,” said Austria.

“Love?!” yelled Prussia. “What do you know of love? Love is no more for you than a ring around your finger and more land under your rule!” He fired at him. A single shot that his Austria on the left eye and threw him off his horse.

The men shot them all at the same time, but the sudden gust of wind around them threw off their aim, such that only one of the bullets his Prussia on the shoulder.

Lightning struck right in the middle of the line of men. Once. Twice. Spain and Prussia rode off.


	5. Chapter 5

They reached the cave well into the night. It was a cold, damp place. But they still managed to light a fire for them. They couldn’t die from cold or hunger, but the warmth of the fire helped calm them and food kept their spirits high.

“Fucking Austria,” muttered Prussia while Spain opened a bottle of wine. “He held him for how long? He never cared. He didn’t call him brother like I did. Not even before Germania was gone.”

Spain drank and let him talk. He hated speaking so soon after killing humans, but Prussia needed it more than Spain needed his silence, so he let him talk as much as he wanted.

The next day Prussia inspected the body and found a wound in Holy Rome’s chest. The skin around it blackened and reeking of death. Spain got out of the cave at that. There was not enough wine in the world to make him stay with him there. Prussia barely notice him.

“I failed you,” he whispered, caressing the side of Holy Rome’s face. “I should have been a better brother. A more leal subject…I should have been with you.”

That wound was the place where death had struck. Some signatures, some agreements…Holy Rome had probably seen it all happen right before his eyes, feeling his heart slowly give out.

“Germania always loved you more than me,” said Prussia. “I wish I hadn’t resented that. I wish I had…”

His eyes filled with tears and fell over Holy Rome’s body.

He wanted Holy Rome to live. He didn’t care about the empire. He wanted the kid to live and to go back to nagging him about not keeping birds in his head and asking him what kind of flowers Italy would like.

The wound that one of Austria’s men had given him still throbbed when he tried to button up Holy Rome’s shirt, and it gave him an idea.

He took out his dagger, cut one of his fingers and let the blood drip into the wound of Holy Rome’s chest.


	6. Chapter 6

Austria found France taking a stroll around the garden of his mansion. He wore a black velvet suit, as beautiful as it was pricey, and laughed at Austria’s new temporary eye patch.

“You got off alright, I’d say. If he hadn’t been in such a hurry, he might have stopped to stab you a few times,” said France, walking away from him.

“France this is no joke!” cried Austria, following after him. “You have no idea how it felt then! Like an all consuming darkness coming from that coffin!”

France nodded, an easy smile on his lips as he kept walking. “Do you think our own corpses will exude that same aura of darkness when we die?”

Austria gritted his teeth. “I think that those are worries for another time, France.”

The kept walking through the garden, taking a road away from the most colorful sections, until they reached a small clear with several tombstones.

“We are earth and sky,” said France. “That is what I always tell myself. But words are wind when you hold your son in your hands. And less than that when you have to pick their dead bodies off the ground. I’ve had twelve. Yesterday I got a message from a lovely up and coming actress I knew a while ago. She tells me she’s pregnant and that the son is mine. I don’t doubt it.  I just hope the happiness his life will bring me will be greater than the pain of losing him.” He scoffed out a laugh. “It never is though. Never.”


	7. Chapter 7

The blood lessened the feeling of dread around Holy Rome’s body, and Prussia prayed day and night in all the languages he knew.

Despite it all, Holy Rome did not get better.

“You think this is useless,” said Prussia one night while he and Spain sat by the fire.

“Even I don’t care what I think Prussia,” said Spain. “It’s not like I think about stuff that much.”

It was a lie. He thought about how dark the world seemed after that feeling of death seemed to cover all his world. He thought about how easily sorrows learned to swim when you tried to drown them in alcohol and about how easily it would be to walk straight into the sea and stay there. Forever.

But mostly he thought about how much he missed Romano and how much he’d rather be home cooking dinner for him.

And that was why he stayed with Prussia, bringing fresh wood for the fire and making sure he ate and rested.

“You’re lying~,” said Prussia with a tired grin.

Spain shrugged. “Whatever. I’m staying with you. If it doesn’t work you can cry on me. But if it does, you owe me a drink.”

Prussia laughed. He hadn’t laughed in a long time, but Spain had lost count of the days.

Prussia burrowed in his blanket. “Maybe we need more blood. Clearly it is helping,” he said.

“Excuse me if I don’t volunteer for _that_ though,” said Spain

“Of course not! It has to be someone closer… Austria is out of the question, but without the empire to support them, perhaps Hesse and the others might be…”

“Are you serious? Are you going to tell them about this?”

“No. I’ll just tell them that, just as easily as Holy Rome was ended, another nation can be brought forth. They are too weak on their own, but together, their strength might bring him back.”

Spain bit his lower lip, and didn’t voice his concerns about that.

Prussia stood up, fueled by the energy of a new idea. “I’ll go see them,” he said.

“What? Now?” asked Spain.

“Yes. You have to stay here and protect him.”

“Alone?” asked Spain, but Prussia was already running out of the cave, and once his footsteps faded he was, indeed, alone.

He closed his eyes and thought of all the things he would cook for Romano when he got back.


	8. Chapter 8

The other states agreed with his proposal. There was strength in being together.

They did not, however, agree with the idea of a blood pact.

He hadn’t meant to stab Saxony against the wall, but after that they were more… comprehensive of his demands.


	9. Chapter 9

When Prussia got back, France was sitting with Spain in the cave.

“What have you done to him?!” asked Prussia, and run past them to look to the little corner where he had put him.

There he was, lying as pale and dead as he had left him.

“Go on,” said France. “I just brought lunch, and my boss doesn’t know I’m here.”

Prussia clenched his fists, but ignored him and went on. He let the blood into the wound of Holy Rome’s chest. The more he looked at his childish face, the less it resembled him. His hair wasn’t as brilliant, his skin too pale. Even his eyelashes seemed wrong.

“That’s really him, right?” asked Prussia.

“Could I possibly produce another childish corpse that feels like a shadow trying to drag you to the confines of hell? I don’t think so Prussia, now sit here. I heard about Saxony and you need to calm down,” said France.

Prussia sat down. But as soon as the sun went down, he resumed his praying in front of Holy Rome’s body.


	10. Chapter 10

They waited seven days.

Then seven days more.

Then they heard breathing.

Prussia opened Holy Rome’s shirt and found the black hole in his chest closed. Still graying, but now blood flowed in his veins. Whose blood it didn’t matter.

“He’s back!” cried Prussia.

“No. He’s alive,” said France.

Seven days later Prussia realized what he meant.

There was no memory in him. No recognition or capacity to speak or walk.

There was nothing left of Holy Rome in him.


	11. Chapter 11

**_2014_ **

“I’ll tell you when you’re older,” said Prussia. “Now go draw. If you behave, I’ll give you some colored pencils, how’s that?”

Kugelmugel frowned at him. “Does it involve sex? I know about sex”

“Wha-?! No! It’s not about sex! Geez, Austria needs to pay more attention to you.”

“I do not!” called Austria from the living room.

They walked back with Austria and Germany. Kugelmugel extended his sheets of paper on the floor and started drawing.

“I let you have toys,” said Germany. “You have too many of them.”

Prussia pouted and grabbed a huge slice of cake for himself without bothering with a plate just to spite him.  “I do not! And you should show me more respect! I’m your big brother, you should listen to me more.”

Germany sighed. “Yes, yes, it’s such a big responsibility to be a big brother,” he said. “By the way, didn’t you say that I was born from my brothers coming together? By all means, if that’s true, they’re more my brothers than you are. You just guided them.”

“With a sword. Stabbing them right into a wall,” said Austria in a nonchalant tone, and sipped on his tea.

“Now you shut up before I stab _you_ into a wall,” said Prussia.

“Uhm? Is there something I should know?” asked Germany.

Prussia leaned back on the couch, with the arrogant smile of a big brother with a secret.

“Nah. Nothing important anyway.”


End file.
